Bogus war tales tarnish history

Library of Congress has posted hundreds of false claims as part of its oral history project honoring veterans, including those of former Wampanoag leader Glenn Marshall.

GEORGE BRENNAN

The Library of Congress, one of the nation's most venerable institutions, has posted hundreds of false claims as part of its oral history project honoring veterans, according to military experts.

The $2.5 million-per-year Veterans History Project was meant to capture and preserve the war stories of U.S. soldiers.

It has, but it's also become a haven for "fakers and phonies," said C. Douglas Sterner, a Vietnam veteran who has exposed hundreds of people making fraudulent military claims.

One of the biggest is Glenn Marshall, the former chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. His bogus claims about fighting in the Siege of Khe Sanh in Vietnam were first exposed by the Times Aug. 24.

Marshall's claims remained part of the Veterans History collection until Sterner and the Times discovered them Sept. 13. In an audiotape still available at the Library of Congress, Marshall is brazen in his claims, telling a Barnstable Middle School student he received "several Purple Hearts" and exaggerating his military service by 10 years.

"I don't show my medals very often because I have so many," he said during the 31-minute interview.

Marshall's false claims to the Veterans History Project prompted Sterner to dig deeper.

An avalanche ensued.

Sterner found that 24 of 49 claims of the Medal of Honor, the military's highest honor for valor, were false. Dozens of other medal claims are also bogus, he said.

The Library of Congress has since checked each Medal of Honor recipient and corrected 24 of them, director Bob Patrick said. Patrick also changed the project's policy this week and will now verify all Medal of Honor claims against a Department of Defense database, he said.

"It's an embarrassment," said David Moore, an employee of the Library of Congress and Vietnam veteran who tried to blow the whistle on problems with the veterans project through letters to senators several years ago.

While he supports the idea of the project, one of the key flaws is that it didn't include anyone with a military background on staff until Patrick was hired as director in 2006. Some bogus claims could have been easily sniffed out by someone with knowledge of the military, he said. "It's scandalous."

Some of the Medal of Honor errors were made by volunteers who interviewed the veterans, Patrick said, others were clerical mistakes on the part of his staff. In several cases, for example, the biography included information that the veteran received the Vietnam Armed Forces Honor Medal, Patrick said. "That was misinterpreted as the Medal of Honor."

There's no excuse to get that wrong, Sterner said.

"There are no doubt some clerical errors, but how are they going to explain away the Navy crosses, the Silver Stars, and the ranks that are in error? They can't explain those away in clerical errors."

Those can't and won't be checked unless project employees are alerted to misinformation, like in the case of Marshall, Patrick said.

The veteran's history Web site contains a disclaimer that information is not verified. It was never the intention to verify the accuracy of the information provided by veterans contributing to the project, which was approved and funded by Congress in 2000, Patrick said.

"This is an oral history project. It's a supplement to history. It's someone's remembrance. It's what they give to us."

But the project to preserve America's war history gives credibility to contrived war stories — some that sound like they're fresh out of a Hollywood script, Sterner said.

Yesterday, after he was contacted by the Times, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called on Library of Congress officials to do whatever possible to maintain the integrity of the project.

"Sen. Kerry believes that the Library of Congress should fully investigate any allegations and take appropriate action," a spokeswoman said.

"He believes it's vitally important to capture and preserve accurate firsthand accounts of the battles that helped shape our nation."

There is no way for the library to check the stories of all 50,000 veterans, Patrick said. There is no national database for other medals of valor.

That could change. Marshall may finally get credit he deserves — that of being the impetus for creating such a database.

U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., plans to file a bill to create a national database for military honors in the next session of Congress, according to his spokesman Eric Wortman.

Wortman downplayed the role Marshall's case played in Salazar's decision, but Sterner said it is absolutely the driving force.

As the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe went for federal recognition, Marshall shared his phony military tales privately with congressmen and repeated his claims about serving in the Siege of Khe Sanh in Vietnam before a congressional committee. It turns out that Marshall was still in high school when the battle occurred.

"(Marshall) propelled this into the national spotlight," Sterner said. "I honestly think if we get this national database, it will be because of Glenn Marshall."

John Hoellwarth, a reporter for the Marine Corps Times who has written about three dozen stories on bogus military records, said the Marshall story has prompted a fresh wave of stories.

"It's a national epidemic," he said. "It happens in cycles and Glenn Marshall was one of the first to surface this year."

In the audio tape, Marshall talks about phony Purple Hearts he received, and exaggerates his military service by 10 years. Marshall served for 23 months.

Marshall has repeatedly refused the Times requests for interviews by phone and in person.

A story that appeared last month in The Day newspaper in New London, Conn., included false claims that Marshall received a Silver Star and five Purple Hearts. That information came from a lobbyist working for the tribe, according to the reporter who wrote the story.

Marshall recorded the tape before a law went into effect, making it illegal to make a false claim of receiving a military medal, Sterner said, but he's passed the information about the tape onto the FBI anyway.

George Brennan can be reached at gbrennan@capecodonline.com. Intern Phil Mattingly contributed to this report.

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